A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROPOSAL FOR A PARTNERSHIP NATURE FILM
by
Jennifer Lee Brown
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
of
Master of Fine Art
in
Science and Natural History Filmmaking
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
Bozeman, Montana
July 2010
©COPYRIGHT
by
Jennifer Lee Brown
2010
All Rights Reserved
ii
APPROVAL
of a thesis submitted by
Jennifer Lee Brown
This thesis has been read by each member of the thesis committee and has been
found to be satisfactory regarding content, English usage, format, citation, bibliographic
style, and consistency, and is ready for submission to the Division of Graduate Education.
Ronald Tobias
Media and Theatre Arts
Robert Arnold
Approved for the Division of Graduate Education
Dr. Carl A. Fox
iii
STATEMENT OF PERMISSION TO USE
In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a
master’s degree at Montana State University, I agree that the Library shall make it
available to borrowers under rules of the Library.
If I have indicated my intention to copyright this thesis by including a
copyright notice page, copying is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with
“fair use” as prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Requests for permission for extended
quotation from or reproduction of this thesis in whole or in parts may be granted
only by the copyright holder.
Jennifer Lee Brown
July 2010
iv
DEDICATION
I dedicate my thesis essay and film, Pine Rockland Composition, to all living things in the
South Florida pine rocklands and that includes the passionate humans.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................1
2.
ANTHROPOCENTRISM.........................................................................................3
3.
PARTNERSHIP.......................................................................................................11
4.
REDUCTIONISM................................................................................................... 15
5.
HYBRID OF DOCUMENTARY FILM MODES................................................. 19
6.
NATURE FILM STYLE......................................................................................... 24
7.
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................ 27
REFERENCES CITED......................................................................................................28
END NOTES.....................................................................................................................29
vi
ABSTRACT
I propose that contemporary natural history documentary films need to incorporate
multiple cultural disciplines or perspectives like critical studies, environmental
philosophy, dialectical biology, and documentary film theory. A multidisciplinary nature
film creates a partnership representation of humans and nature absent in natural history
documentary films. I use critical rhetoric and examples from contemporary nature films
to argue that a partnership nature film showing humans as part of nature and both humans
and nature with respect is compatible with conservation and incompatible with a profitdriven commercial broadcast system.
1
INTRODUCTION
It seems to me that nature films1 from the Walt Disney True-Life Adventure2 series
in the mid 20th century to the BBC Planet Earth series in the early 21st century try to
“cash in on nature” as spectacle with the justification “before you teach conservation,
you have to fascinate” (Mitman 2,3). This attitude leads to a problematic populist
entertainment imperative for contemporary nature films (Wilson 125). The problem is
that we live in a postmodern world of global environmental degradation where that kind of
film no longer fits or belongs in representations of nature. Films that represent nature as
entertainment and spectacle for commercial gain are inconsistent with nature
conservation3. Anthropocentric, reductionist and expository nature films as a commercial
enterprise generally fail to represent humans as part of nature and both humans and
nature with respect. Representations of nature on film need to show humans as part of
and partners with nature, not superior and separate, to deconstruct human hyperseparation
from nature in our Western culture. Hyperseparation reinforces the dominant ideology
that positions nature as passive object, rather than an active agent and equal subject. And
yet, no matter what the representation, nature films will always signify a cultural
construction of nature by the filmmakers. William Cronon writes, “The way we describe
and understand that world (natural) is so entangled with our own values and assumptions
that the two can never be fully separated” (25). Nature as culture begs the question for
natural history filmmakers to be more self-aware when deciding what nature and whose
2
nature to represent. “If we hope for an environmentalism capable of explaining why
people use and abuse the earth as they do, then the nature we study must become less
natural and more cultural” (Cronon 36). My own values and assumptions about nature
as an artist, naturalist, Caucasian, graduate student, woman, and middle-class American
influence the way I see nature and humans as equal, interacting, mutually responsive
partners. It sounds simple to construct a film showing humans as part of nature and both
humans and nature with respect, but it is anything but simple. In my essay, I argue that
contemporary nature films desperately need a multidisciplinary approach. I identify
multiple disciplines or perspectives intrinsic to nature filmmaking that include critical
studies, environmental philosophy, dialectical biology, and documentary film theory.
Overall, this is a proposal for a multidimensional partnership representation of humans
and nature that is noticeably absent in the contemporary nature film archive. A
partnership of humans and nature is compatible with conservation and incompatible with
a profit-driven commercial broadcast system. I refer to the BBC Planet Earth film series
(2007) and my thesis film, Pine Rockland Composition (2010), throughout my essay to
illustrate the need for a multidisciplinary approach to natural history filmmaking.
3
ANTHROPOCENTRISM
Nature films will never escape the complex web of values and meanings of the
filmmakers because film production is a human system of representation. Nature films
will always contain some degree of anthropocentrism. However, I propose that
conservation filmmakers minimize anthropocentric nature constructions.
Anthropocentrism as an ideology interprets and positions nature exclusively in terms of
human values and experiences. Anthropocentric films privilege the human perspective
which automatically marginalizes nature as lesser and other. It also diminishes respect
not only for nature, but also for decontextualized, or denaturalized, humans.
Anthropocentric nature films are ubiquitous on broadcast television. For example, each
episode from the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU) Planet Earth series needs a
rethinking from anthropocentrism to a partnership ideology.
Partnership as an ideology interprets and positions nature and humans as equal,
mutually responsive partners (Merchant 25). Carolyn Merchant proposes a partnership
ethic based on mutual living interdependence and dynamic relationships of give and take
between human and nonhuman communities. Merchant says in her book Reinventing
Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture,
The only way we can, as human, integrate ourselves into a life-sustaining
relationship to nature, is for both of us, males as much as females, to see
ourselves as equally rooted in the cycles of life and death, and equally
responsible for creating ways of living sustainably together in that
relationship (36).
A partnership ethic in a nature film is consistent with conservation and my thesis
4
argument to show humans as part of nature and both humans and nature with respect. It
is also inconsistent with anthropocentrism and reductionism that characterize
contemporary nature films.
Planet Earth is the most expensive nature documentary television series in the
history of the genre. Planet Earth filmmakers describe the film series as "the definitive
look at the diversity of our planet" (Wikipedia4). This statement reveals a high degree of
anthropocentrism, lack of respect for nature, and underlying cultural hegemony of the
BBC NHU filmmakers. No film can ever offer a definitive look at our extremely diverse
planet, especially a film that removes all human social context.
Consider the BBC Planet Earth episode Seasonal Forests (2007). It is
anthropocentric on multiple levels because it reflects and disseminates the human values
and experiences of the BBC production team and viewers by representing nature with an
anthropocentric narration and without humans. In other words, humans can talk about
nature behind the camera but they can not appear in front of the camera with nature. It is
remarkable that the BBC disseminates a construction of spectacular images of nature
without any signs of humans or civilization. This anthropocentric perspective encourages
humans to apply more value to spectacular nature and nature as wilderness and less value
to nature with humans and nature in our backyards and local communities. Seasonal
Forests encourages humans to see themselves as separate and superior to an inferior
nature thereby distorting the complex human and nonhuman interrelationships and social
context within nature.
The spectacular opening shot in Seasonal Forests ascends a redwood tree from the
5
BBC film balloon; it passes two climbers during the ascent before revealing an aerial of the
redwood forest. Who are these humans and why are they climbing this redwood tree? As
viewers, we will never know. This opening shot is the only representation of humans in
the entire film. The climbers appear to symbolize human domination over nature. In
another example, Seasonal Forests represents the critically endangered Amur leopard as
struggling for survival during the winter season. The narrator explains how survival for
the leopard is difficult because of the extremely cold winter. The film fails to represent
the extensive regional forest logging, subsequent reduction in prey food, and poaching as
reasons for the critically endangered status. In Wildlife Films, Derek Bousé argues that a
film that says too much about an issue, like threatened and endangered species, will lose
the audience, but if it says too little, it will lose the subject (16). Seasonal Forests loses
both its subject and its audience with a singular, anthropocentric perspective. The
omniscient narrator, David Attenborough in this case, explains every single nonhuman
behavior using human terms and ideology. Val Plumwood argues in her book
Environmental Culture: The ecological crisis of reason that anthropocentric language
constitutes a lack of respect for the differences of animals by representing them in terms
of humans. The narrator should not “be” the other, but “represent” the other; and further,
the narrator should not speak “as” the other but “with” the other (Plumwood 60). A
typical Seasonal Forest excerpt exemplifies the focus on magnificent nature and
anthropocentric narration:
The American conifer forests may not be the richest in animal life, but their
trees are extraordinary...Higher up in the nearby mountains, Bristlecone
pines, the oldest organisms on the planet...They were alive before the
6
pyramids were built and were already 3,000 years old when Christ was born.
An aerial shot transports the viewer between a Giant sequoia and a Bristlecone pine while
representing the forest with narration like statistical facts, emotionally manipulative
music, and consequently, low respect. In this example, the narrator fails to speak with
nature neither representing nature as active agent nor as an equal subject. In another
example, horror movie music accompanies the emergence of millions of periodical
cicadas. The Seasonal Forest narration explains, “After seventeen years underground,
creatures are stirring. Now they march like zombies towards the nearest tree and start to
climb.” This narration is more consistent with an anthropocentric entertainment objective
rather than an ethical representation, or partnership objective.
Anthropocentric films further fail to represent nature with respect due to
underrepresentation of both natural soundscapes and the gradualness of nature5. As
naturalists attest, humans learn about and appreciate nature through their senses,
especially listening to natural soundscapes. Personally, I was yearning to hear the natural
soundscapes and synchronized sounds in Seasonal Forests. Instead, Planet Earth
introduces each forest from the Taiga to the Baobab with a dramatic musical score, nondiegetic human narration, and nonsynchronized sounds. Natural soundscapes are
infrequent, artificial, and often compete with dramatic music. One soundscape represents
a forest interior but accompanies an aerial shot floating high above the forest exterior.
The best sound representation is not a soundscape, but rather individual vocalizations for
species like the Great Grey owls and periodical cicadas. Overall, the Planet Earth
filmmakers lose the subject (i.e., nature) by removing synchronized sound and natural
7
soundscapes from their representations of nature. Diane Ackerman speculates in her book
Natural History of the Senses,
Virtually all movies these days have soundtracks and background music. The
assumption must be that we’re not competent to hear the world, and that we
need music to supply us with quick, relevant emotions. Is this because we
don’t think the world is worth listening to? Is it because filmmakers wish to
combine words and music for the most intense emotional effect? Or is it just
that they think we’re too lazy, or too shallow, or too numb to have an
emotional response to what we’re viewing (216)?
I agree that excessive, dramatic music removes value from nature and natural
soundscapes and adds value to sounds that are emotionally manipulative. In The Artifice
of the Natural, Charles Siebert presents a critical viewer perspective about constructed
wildlife documentaries referring to them as “extravagant animal opera, dramatizing,
scoring, voicing in human terms the vast backdrop of inhuman action” (43). Because
nature films show a fast-paced nature to satisfy a fast-paced culture, they create an
inaccurate representation of the gradualness of nature (Siebert 48). Seasonal Forests
describes the Taiga forest as “a silent world where little stirs”. This sequence begins
gradually by showing Arctic fox and polar bear tracks in the Taiga before becoming a fastpaced succession of a lynx, moose, crossbill, and a “gluttonous” wolverine eating a
caribou carcass.
Consider my film, Pine Rockland Composition, for comparison. It might seem a
stretch to compare a low budget, independent student film with a big budget, blue-chip
co-production like Planet Earth. But, it is not the image quality nor budget that is under
analysis; rather, it is the representation of humans as part of nature and showing humans
and nature with respect.
8
The subject of Pine Rockland Composition is the human and nonhuman
interrelationships within the pine rockland natural community. I begin with a brief
background to the pine rocklands. The subtropical and globally imperiled pine rocklands
occur exclusively on the Miami Rock Ridge limestone6 in South Florida and
predominantly within Everglades National Park7. The pine rocklands underwent rapid
agricultural and urban development with the advent of the rock plow in the mid to late
20th century. Today, the pine rocklands consist of fragmented remnants as a result of
habitat development and degradation, fire suppression, nonnative species, and alterations
to hydrology. At the same time, there exists multiple cooperative human relationships
including beneficial prescribed burning, the reintroduction of extirpated birds like Eastern
bluebirds, and the restoration of the pine rockland by landowners. Pine rocklands host
the highest plant diversity of any natural community in Florida with a rich herb, palm,
shrub understory and a Slash pine overstory. Pine rocklands require prescribed or
lightning-ignited fires to control the growth of understory hardwood shrubs and to
facilitate nutrient cycling in a nutrient-poor environment. The subtropical climate of
South Florida roughly divides the year into a wet and a dry season. Daily thunderstorms
and occasional tropical storms or even hurricanes characterize the summer wet season.
Pine Rockland Composition is approximately thirty minutes long. My film begins
at night during the wet season in the pine rocklands within Everglades National Park. The
first three minutes excludes human subjects and human exposition to introduce the pine
rockland from a nonhuman perspective. In fact, my film omits all anthropocentric
9
narration and instead, represents a range of human perspectives embedded in nature who
each relate to being part of rather than separate from the pine rocklands. The viewer sees
the first human, an Everglades fish biologist, from an underwater, nonhuman perspective
as he pulls a fish trap out of a pine rockland solution hole. Later, the person responsible
for reintroducing extirpated birds responds to my question about whether humans are
part of intact ecosystems. He says “I definitely like it when there is not as many
humans. But, I mean, I think we are certainly a component of it. I think we are, as a
species, trying to figure out how we fit into that.” Pine Rockland Composition minimizes
anthropocentric constructions by including both spectacular nature such as time-lapsed
photography of plant growth after a prescribed fire, and less spectacular nature such as
roads and urban development. A range of shots showing current land use of historic pine
rocklands represents the development and degradation of the globally imperiled pine
rocklands. As a result, my film does not lose its subject to gain an audience. For
example, I show a family planting a native garden of pine rockland plants adjacent to
their house. Pine Rockland Composition encourages viewers to apply equal value to
spectacular nature or nature as wilderness as to nature with humans and nature in our
backyards and local communities.
Pine Rockland Composition begins with a representative nocturnal, wet season
natural soundscape of rainfall, thunder, frogs, mosquitoes, and bird calls. In fact, every
film sequence incorporates a rich soundscape of both synchronized and nonsynchronized
sounds that sometimes includes human sounds like an airplane. The exclusion of
10
background music for most of the film encourages the viewer to hear and respect the pine
rocklands. Music clips from an instrumental song compliment the interaction between
nature and humans rather than manipulate human emotions. Pine Rockland Composition
represents the gradualness in nature by showing some slow-paced nature. For example, a
field biologist listens to and watches an Eastern bluebird for about fifteen seconds, and,
an ambush bug stalks prey on a pineland croton for about twenty seconds. Overall, Pine
Rockland Composition removes non-diegetic anthropocentric narration, incorporates
human and social context, removes emotionally manipulative music, and adds more
representations of gradual nature, all of which is more consistent with a partnership rather
than anthropocentric representation.
11
PARTNERSHIP
What would a partnership film look like? To begin, it would not represent only
magnificent and homogenous nature, nature without humans, or even humans without
nature. A partnership film producer might begin each project as an exploration into
multiple perspectives considering the nonhuman, human, cultural, social, and other
contextual factors present before attempting a representation. Pine Rockland
Composition attempts to construct such a partnership film. The entire film production
process to represent just one natural community on our planet takes two years. It is a
time-intensive process for a single filmmaker to research human and nonhuman
interrelationships within the complex pine rockland natural community both inside and
outside Everglades National Park. In contrast, Seasonal Forests lacks any kind of
partnership ethic. It represents no less than ten different forests around the world within a
fifty-minute episode. As such, it avoids an exploration of nature partnerships within any
complex, interdependent seasonal forest natural community.
Partnership filmmakers would deconstruct dualisms like human-nature and natureculture by showing humans as part of nature and nature as an active not a passive agent.
Humans that live in Western cultures and urban environments often lose track of remote
nature and fail to see themselves as ecological and embedded beings (Plumwood 19). This
monological environmental ideology creates multiple dualisms like subject-object, humannature and nature-culture. Dualisms and binary thinking translate through a cultural
reification process into a human perception of nature as not only other, but also separate,
12
manipulable, instrumental, homogeneous, and having less agency. Human-nature
hyperseparation blocks human identification, respect, and critical questions that address
inequalities between humans and nature (Plumwood 102).
A partnership film would balance human and nonhuman perspectives and voices.
Pine Rockland Composition entirely alternates between a human and nonhuman
perspective and between human voices and natural soundscapes. In my film, I generally
introduce each pine rockland interrelationship, or sequence, from a nonhuman perspective
before integrating the human perspective. For example, a sequence about a solution hole
begins from an underwater fish and wet season perspective before integrating the human
perspective. In another example, the fire sequence begins with a long take of a fire
burning the pine rockland understory on a small island within Everglades National Park.
Next, the sequence incorporates the fire crew perspective, nonhuman perspective of a
lizard and rodent escaping the fire, plants responding to fire, fire responding to the
environment, fire ecologist perspective, plant regeneration after a fire, and then numerous
animals thriving in a fire-maintained pine rockland including Eastern bluebird and Whitetailed deer. The camera shots alternate between a human perspective, such as filming at
eye-level, and a nonhuman perspective, such as filming through a pine tree snag cavity.
Pine Rockland Composition alternates between humans explaining nature to letting
nonhuman images speak for themselves. In other words, my film encourages greater
respect for nature by explaining some, but not all, nonhuman organisms and processes. In
contrast, Seasonal Forests not only explains all nonhuman organisms, but it does so from
13
an anthropocentric perspective.
Pine Rockland Composition features at least seven partnership relationships
between humans and pine rockland nature. In one such relationship, a research biologist
responds to the road collision and mortality of two bluebirds by erecting a bluebird
memorial sign. The memorial sign increases respect for bluebirds and nature. It also
emphasizes the lack of partnership when humans drive too fast on roads bisecting the
home of nonhumans. “Living with and communicating with nature opens the possibility
of nondominating, nondualistic interaction between humans and nature” (Merchant 229).
My film shows each human subject interacting with and describing different aspects of
complex pine rockland nature as an equal subject and active agent. The Everglades Fire
Management Officer perceives fire as an active agent when he says,
When I am looking at fire, I am watching combustion at work, so to speak, and
that physical process. But also, you are watching an ancient process at
work. Watching a fire graze, so to speak, through the pinelands, depositing
its ash and changing the landscape, opening it up for more sunlight, putting
more nutrients down. And, I know that there is going to be a beauty after this
place is blackened.
Pine Rockland Composition culminates with a partnership between humans and pine
rockland nature at the Pine Ridge Sanctuary where a married couple live on a fifteen acre
pine rockland remnant adjacent to Everglades National Park. They represent an enigma in
South Florida for their dedication to habitat restoration following the devastation of
Hurricane Andrew8 in addition to their respect for pine rocklands as an active agent.
They make a living by growing orchids in a greenhouse and leaving the rest of their land
14
for conservation. Overall, Pine Rockland Composition exemplifies a partnership nature
film because it interprets and positions pine rockland nature and humans as equal,
mutually responsive partners (Merchant 25).
15
REDUCTIONISM
Nature is a human cultural construct. It is also a real, material and active agent
(Merchant 216) . Nature is more complicated than any human system of representation.
“The ecosystem is not more complex than we think, it is more complex than we can
think” (Cronon 247). If nature is so complex, it is also more complex than any film can
represent it. Nature film producers and writers are more or less aware that they choose
which science theory to inform the film text. They base their choice on their personal
history and the dominant cultural ideology. Individualism, or reductionism, is the
common choice for nature filmmakers in Western cultures.
Reductionism describes the main issue for science as the study of individual species
by separating out parts from the complex whole. A reductionist biologist rejects the
holistic concept of natural community as a human construct. Instead, the landscape
consists of an assemblage of species that spread out depending on competition, chance,
and life history traits. Filmmakers, like scientists, can choose whether to see more holism
or reductionism and more competition or cooperation in nature. The reductionist and
competitive perspective of nature typifies contemporary nature films.
Seasonal Forests pretends to represent the seasonal forest as a habitat or
ecosystem9. It is a reductionist representation, however, that extracts individual species
from the environment. As viewers, we do not learn about nature as complex and adaptive
or about geological and climate processes. For example, we learn about the Bristlecone
16
pine being the oldest organism on the planet. But we do not explore why it is the oldest.
To do that, the film would need to incorporate the surrounding harsh and adaptive natural
community of which it is part. Extreme close-up cinematography further extracts
individuals from the surrounding forest community. The most significant reduction is to
lump together ten distinct and diverse forest communities ranging from coniferous to
broadleaf and the Arctic to the tropics into a single category of seasonal forest. The text
in Seasonal Forest uses reductive and competitive terminology like “survival of the
fittest”, “dominates”, “winners and losers”, “hunting”, and “species adaptations”. Even
the seasonal forests compete with each other for the most wildlife, productivity, edible
leaves, and hospitable climate. I propose that a nature film with a linear, reductionist and
competition perspective fails to represent nature with respect. A partnership nature film
pursues representations with a science perspective that is nonlinear and process-based.
I choose dialectical biology as a postmodern science to influence my partnership
representation of nature in Pine Rockland Composition. “A postclassical, postmodern
science is a science of limited knowledge, of the primacy of process over parts, and of
imbedded contexts within complex, open, ecological systems” (Merchant 216). It
emphasizes nature as complex, nonlinear, and as a process of continuous change.
Dialectical biology describes the main issue for science as the study of unity and
contradiction, or cooperation and competition. “These are the properties of things that
we call dialectical: that one thing cannot exist without the other, that one acquires its
properties from its relation to the other, that the properties of both evolve as a
17
consequence of their interpenetration” (Levins & Lewontin 3). A dialectical biologist
would view the pine rockland natural community in terms of dynamic interrelationships
between organisms and the environment which interpenetrate on multiple material levels
such as food availability, predator population, species competition, cover and nest
availability, nutrient cycling, weather, hydrology, disease, vegetation structure, fire,
humans, and so on. These levels are only a few of the givens and constraints within that
the pine rockland dynamics change and function.
How might a filmmaker construct a representation of the dialectical unity and
contradiction of a natural community, considering the spatial and temporal invisibility of
many organisms and processes to the human eye and camera lens? For example, imagine
the difficulty in representing the limestone geology and erosion process in the pine
rocklands. Translating and representing the complexity in nature confronts “vexing
limitations of film and video as media of analysis” (Nichols 147). One approach that
reconciles complexity with technological limitations is to select and film representative
interrelationships in a natural community 10. This selection process is both dialectical and
reductionist since it extracts parts, or interrelationships, from the whole, or natural
community. It is unavoidable that the film production process necessitates a reduction of
nature into shots and even frames of video. However, this process is also dialectical
because every single nature shot, or part, exists in the context of a competitive or
cooperative interrelationship.
18
Pine Rockland Composition incorporates representations of dialectical
interrelationships beginning underground in a limestone solution hole showing geological,
hydrological and subtropical climate processes before moving progressively upward to
the pine rockland understory showing vegetation structure, fire, and nutrient cycling
processes, and then up to the overstory showing pine tree snags as nest substrates and
pine cone fertilization before moving progressively outward beyond Everglades National
Park to the pine rockland remnants showing human development, hurricane process and
social, economic, cultural contexts. Pine Rockland Composition features
interrelationships that represent humans as part of nature and both humans and nature
with respect. Interrelationships are both cooperative, like insect-plant pollination and
habitat restoration, and competitive, like herbivory and human development. My film
favors wide-shots rather than the telephoto shots to position individual subjects within
pine rockland interrelationships and the natural community. So far, my thesis proposes a
multidisciplinary nature film incorporating the environmental philosophy of partnership
and the nonlinear science of dialectical biology. As such, it requires a film perspective to
turn my idea of a partnership nature film into a representation of my reality.
19
HYBRID OF DOCUMENTARY FILM MODES
In Representing Reality, Bill Nichols describes the most common documentary film
modes as expository, observational, interactive, and reflexive. Each mode offers a
different perspective of reality in our semiotic natural world. While many social
documentary films are a hybrid of modes, the majority of nature documentary films
embrace the expository. I propose that a partnership nature film should incorporate a
hybrid perspective from the expository, observational, and reflexive modes to better
represent humans as part of nature and both humans and nature with respect.
Pine Rockland Composition is a hybrid of expositional, observational, and reflexive
documentary filmmaking. It is observational because it eschews narration and an
exclusively didactic argument. Instead, it incorporates indirect, somewhat extensive,
observations of humans and nonhumans within a social context. This perspective shows
humans as part of nature with greater context or culture, and consequently, more respect.
Like a fly on the wall, the observational mode represents present-tense interactions to
reveal nonlinear interrelationships and processes. For example, my film shows long takes
of present-tense human observations, such as the bluebird and fire crews, with
synchronous sounds in pine rockland nature. Pine Rockland Composition encourages the
viewer, but does not tell the viewer, to engage in nonlinear readings of the text. For
example, the viewer must understand earlier representations between nonhumans and fire
to understand a later representation of fire. The observational mode encourages more
20
voyeurism, gradualness, and multidimensional space in nature. While voyeurism might
reinforce dualisms by showing nature as a scopophilic object, my film counters
voyeurism by including reflexivity, minimizing close-up cinematography, and excluding
private animal behaviors, such as mating. As a hybrid nature film, Pine Rockland
Composition incorporates observational techniques consistent with showing humans as
part of nature and both humans and nature with respect.
The non-didactic, open text characterizing the observational mode represents the
present-tense human perspective in partnership relationships very well. However, the
open text and lack of exposition might fail to adequately represent some nonhuman
perspectives. “Documentary is a fiction unlike any other precisely because the images
direct us toward the historical world, but if that world is unfamiliar to us, our direction
will just as likely be toward a fiction like any other” (Nichols 160). A representation of
complex nature like a dialectical interrelationship without human exposition may increase
respect for the agency of nature, but it may also decrease respect with a false
interpretation. For this reason, a hybrid nature film necessitates some expository
techniques.
Pine Rockland Composition is expository because human voice-over text, rhetorical
organization and titles direct the viewer towards my indirect argument about the world,
which is that humans are part of nature and nature is a dialectical natural community. My
film uses voice-over from expository field interviews with contextualized humans rather
than decontextualized voice-of-god narration. The rhetorical organization of an indirect
21
argument represents nature with respect by maintaining spatial and temporal continuity
rather than argument continuity. In other words, the continuous representation of spatial
and temporal pine rockland interrelationships takes precedence over an anthropocentric
didactic argument. Pine Rockland Composition also incorporates expository titles like
“Fire”, “Partnership”, “Interrelationship”, and “Wet Season” to substantiate the tacit
argument of a dialectical natural community. The expository ranges between a direct to a
more indirect, poetic argument.
By contrast, Seasonal Forests exemplifies one mode, the expository, rather than a
hybrid of modes. It employs a direct argument because voice-of-god narration and
evidentiary editing directs the viewer towards a dominant ideological argument about the
natural world. An unseen BBC filmmaker maintains rhetorical continuity instead of
spatial or temporal continuity. It also employs an indirect, poetic argument with aerials
and close-up shots showing expressive patterns of trees and forests. In another example,
computer generated time-lapsed photography shows seasonal foliage and flower
transformations. Nichols offers a poignant critique of the expository reaffirming my
proposal for a multidisciplinary approach. “Though bodily and ethically absented, the
filmmaker retains the controlling voice, and the subject of the film becomes displaced into
a mythic realm of reductive, stereotype as powerless victim” (Nichols 91). Nature in
Seasonal Forests becomes both a passive object and a BBC stereotype.
Pine Rockland Composition is reflexive because it reveals the production process
and cinematic apparatus. Reflexivity challenges both the process of a nature
22
representation and the constructed impression of nature as an epistemological reality.
Reflexivity counters the voyeurism implicit in the expository and observational modes.
The title reflects my composition or construction of nature on film. I reveal myself, the
filmmaker, and my video camera with an introductory, reflexive montage. The montage
shows me cleaning the camera lens, asking an interview question, filming from a tree stand
in over-exposed video, and repositioning my camera. My film includes some, but not all,
of my questions as a filmmaker. The questions are an off-screen commentary to show
my exploratory thought process. Too much reflexivity like on-screen commentary or
constantly showing the cinematic apparatus might reduce viewer empathy for and
immersion with pine rockland nature. Reflexivity is critical to a partnership film hybrid
because it reinforces a representation of nature as a social and cultural construct. “This
questioning of its own status, conventions, effects, and values may well represent the
maturation of the genre” (Nichols 63).
As I said earlier, Seasonal Forests is poetic expository; however, Planet Earth
includes a ten minute behind-the-scenes featurette following each fifty minute episode.
Entitled Planet Earth Diaries, it shows footage of the BBC production crew and
cinematic apparatus. This reflexive device succeeds in showing humans in nature in
addition to the BBC cultural construction of nature. However, it fails as a device to
represent humans and nature with respect for at least two reasons. First, it separates, or
extracts, the featurette from the main feature. Second, the local humans remain silent as
object and other, similar to nature. We see locals gather to watch the filmmakers deploy a
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balloon rig for filming, but there is no verbal interaction between them. Instead, the
narrator speaks for them by saying “puzzled locals take the ring side seats.” The
surrounding cultural and social context of Madagascar is one-dimensional and remains in
the background. I sense an anthropocentric motivation rather than a reflexive process.
Planet Earth Diaries satisfies viewer epistephelia for a behind-the-scenes perspective.
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NATURE FILM STYLE
The style of a nature film reflects the cultural, technical and moral perspective of
the filmmaker. A more self-aware and personal style increases film authorship with a
unique cultural construction of nature. Different motivations for style, or the relationship
between object and text, include realism and formal (Nichols 22)11. While realism
characterizes the majority of nature films, it is difficult to detect authorship in large
production nature films due to an overreliance on formulaic styles to satisfy viewer
expectations and ratings. Realism in conventional nature films embraces objectivity under
the pretense of being professional and unbiased. There exists a myth of objectivity and
neutrality in science and nature films (Crowther 297). And yet, objectivity is antithetical
to representing both humans and nature with respect. Nature film styles, like any other
art, may range between realism and expressionism, objectivity and subjectivity. A
partnership film incorporates more formal expressionism and subjectivity to make nature
films more cultural and less natural.
A nature film embracing realism, formal poetic expository, and the myth of
objectivity will not produce a multidimensional representation of a complex,
interdependent natural community. How might a partnership filmmaker incorporate more
style and subjectivity to produce a multidimensional representation? The filmmaker
might explore an expressive style reflecting her culture and personal engagement with
nature. This style would not satisfy the viewer’s expectation for spectacle and
25
conventions but rather would satisfy the filmmaker as an artist. In Pine Rockland
Composition, I develop my own formal style using expressive colors and forms,
superimposed images, and illustrations to show humans as part of nature and both
humans and nature with respect.
I compose each shot in Pine Rockland Composition with an expressive bias for
bright colors, contrasting warm and cool colors, and distinct forms. A bright color palette
best expresses my emotion for the pine rocklands. I perceive each pine rockland
interrelationship in terms of colors and forms. A solution hole is a circle whereas a pine
tree is a line. A sequence about fire in the pine rocklands is green with vegetation, orange
with fire, and black with char. Pine Rockland Composition encourages the viewer to see
my perception of pine rockland colors and forms. For example, a blurred sunrise
represents the bright orange circle of the sun rising behind the brown lines of pine trees
and solid bright green understory. My film consistently alternates cool colors with
contrasting warm colors to increase the formal rhythm and cohesion of color.
Pine Rockland Composition incorporates two kinds of superimposed images.
Firstly, my film cross-dissolves two video clips from different times. For example, I film
a pine rockland space during a prescribed fire without a human. Then, I film the same
pine rockland space after the prescribed fire with a human subject. When I cross-dissolve
the two video clips, the human appears to walk into the fire. In another example, a
pineland croton plant exuding red sap from caterpillar herbivory cross-dissolves with a
human bleeding from a mosquito bite. Secondly, my film overlays two video clips that
26
play simultaneously. For example, video of the fish biologist at a solution hole overlays
video of fish in the same solution hole. I superimpose every human subject with an
interrelated pine rockland subject. The motivation for both kinds of superimposed images
is both formal and ideological to represent humans as part of nature.
Pine Rockland Composition incorporates expressive illustrations to represent a
perspective of the pine rocklands impossible to represent with video. Two illustrations
show an aerial perspective of the Miami Rock Ridge before and after development. I
commissioned artists familiar with the pine rocklands to facilitate a subjective perspective
and formal aesthetic consistent with my film. The illustrations feature representative
subjects from Pine Rockland Composition such as a solution hole, fire, bluebird, and
humans. A third illustration shows a side-profile perspective of the pine rocklands with a
human part of and observing nature.
Pine Rockland Composition incorporates greater subjectivity by representing
subjective human and nonhuman perspectives in addition to slow motion shots of
processes and animal behaviors. My film represents both the exterior and interior of each
human subject to increase empathetic identification. For example, the fish biologist
reveals an interior perspective when he says, “I just like to look in the water, to see the
fish. It goes back to when I was a little kid and getting dropped off, getting dropped off
at the river while my dad was working in the fields.” Overall, the formal style and
subjectivity of Pine Rockland Composition adds dimensionality and thus increases human
respect and wonder for the pine rockland natural community.
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CONCLUSION
Painters and filmmakers often create art to show the public a new way of looking
at life (Wilder 17). My thesis essay and film, Pine Rockland Composition, represent a
new way of looking at a natural community showing humans as part of nature and both
humans and nature with respect. It incorporates multiple disciplines intrinsic to nature
film constructions including critical studies, environmental philosophy, science, and
documentary film theory. Pine Rockland Composition says as much about me and my
culture as it does about pine rockland nature. I propose this multidisciplinary approach
to contemporary nature films to encourage natural history documentary filmmakers to
explore new ways to represent complex, dynamic nature as culture for conservation.
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REFERENCES CITED
Ackerman, Diane. Natural History of the Senses. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Bousé, Derek. Wildlife Films. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
Cronon, William. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. N.Y.: W.
W. Norton and Co., 1996.
Crowther, Barbara. “Viewing What Comes Naturally: A Feminist Approach to
Television Natural History,” Women’s Studies International Press, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.
289-300, 1997.
Krause, Bernie. Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World.
Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 2002.
Levins, R. & Lewontin, R. The Dialectical Biologist. Cambridge & London: Harvard
University Press, 1985.
Merchant, Carolyn. Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture. New
York: Routledge, 2003.
Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature. Cambridge, MA: University of Harvard Press, 1999.
Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.
“Planet Earth.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 19 Feb 2010, 08:32 UTC.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_%28TV_series%29>.
Plumwood, Val. Environmental Culture: The ecological crisis of reason. London and
New York: Routledge, 2002.
Siebert, Charles. “The Artifice of the Natural”. Harpers (1993):43-51.
Wilder, Jesse Bryant. Art History for Dummies. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing,
2007.
Wilson, Alexander. “Looking at the Non-Human: Nature Movies and TV,” from
The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez.
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992. 117-155.
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END NOTES
1
Nature film is short-hand for a natural history documentary film.
2
Walt Disney Studios distributed the True-Life Adventure series in the 1950’s. Each film
“portrayed a fantasy of pristine nature far removed from the commercial world of
modern, industrialized America” (Mitman 110).
3
Conservation goals are an attempt to “restrain shortsighted exploitation of natural
resources, while supporting a utilitarian philosophy of wise use” (Merchant 137).
4
Wikipedia is an online social encyclopedia. To visit, go to:
<www.wikipedia.com>.
5
A soundscape is any human or nonhuman acoustic environment. A natural soundscape
refers to the natural sounds that organisms generate in a habitat revealing acoustic
interrelationships and auditory niches (Krause 154).
6
The Miami Rock Ridge elevation ranges between one and twenty feet. It is the highest
elevation in South Florida.
7
Everglades National Park is the third largest national park in the United States of
America. It contains a mosaic of upland and lowland habitats with both tropical and
temperate species. It is adjacent to extensive urban and agricultural development.
8
Hurricane Andrew was a powerful Category 5 hurricane that hit South Florida in 1992.
The result was devastating to South Florida, Homestead, and the pine rocklands.
9
“Central to the ecosystem concept is the idea that living organisms interact with every
other element in their local environment.”
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem>.
10
“A natural community is defined as a distinct and recurring assemblage of populations
of plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms naturally associated with each other and
their physical environment.”
<http://www.fnai.org/descriptions.cfm>.
11
“Formal motivation occurs when we justify the presence of an image by its
contribution to a formal or stylistic pattern intrinsic to the text” (Nichols 26).